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Personality change associated with chronic diseases: pooled analysis of four prospective cohort stud

peggy-sue

Senior Member
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I remain completely unconvinced by the "extraverts need stimulation, introverts don't" hypothesis.
Or even in either construct. :rolleyes:

Are all folk who are now diagnosed with ADHD just the same as those who used to be known as extraverts?
Or is that something else entirely? ;)
 

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
I've read the paper now (but not most of this discussion I'm afraid):

In the Introduction they say:

We also hypothesized a decrease in extraversion, because several chronic diseases cause fatigue and loss of energy (de Ridder et al. 2008) that potentially decrease features of extraversion, such as positive mood, activity, and approach-motivated behaviour.

de Ridder D, Geenen R, Kuijer R, van Middendorp H (2008). Psychological adjustment to chronic disease. Lancet 372, 246–255. (that paper is free at: http://www.researchgate.net/publica...o_chronic_disease/file/79e41508e4274ac3b0.pdf)

I thought this was interesting given this effect would thus likely be big in ME/CFS.
 

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
The total number of new chronic diseases between Time 1 and Time 2 taken together showed that higher number of diseases was associated with decreasing extraversion, decreasing emotional stability, decreasing conscientiousness and decreasing openness to experience over time (Fig. 1; cohort-specific associations reported in online Supplementary Figs S2–S6), while no significant association was observed for change in agreeableness. The associations followed a dose– response pattern, with each chronic condition strengthening the association in a linear fashion. The estimates for linear trends (i.e. personality change per one disease onset when the number of diseases was coded as a continuous variable) are reported in the first row of Table 2.

To examine whether the extent of personality change was related to the extent of change in depressive symptoms and self-rated health, we fitted the number of chronic conditions as a continuous (Table 2) rather than as categorical (Fig. 1) measure, and then examined whether the associations between chronic disease onset and personality change attenuated after adjustment for depressive symptoms and self-rated health. As shown in Table 2, adjusting for change in depressive symptoms affected little the associations, while adjusting for change in both depressive symptoms and self-rated health attenuated the associations of chronic conditions with personality change in neuroticism, conscientiousness and openness to experience by approximately one-third, and those with change in extraversion almost by two-thirds. Thus, deteriorating self-reported health after the onset of chronic diseases may account for some of the association between the onset of chronic diseases and personality change, especially in extraversion

One might then expect that ME/CFS, which often is like having several impairments in terms of the number of symptoms and in the impairment, would have big effect on personality scores.
 
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Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
The whole point of personality research is to find and identify stable characteristics.
It's about individual differences.

If a "personality" changes with illness, then that theory of personality is wrong. It needs dumped.

But I want to apply all this stuff to the psychs. What sort of "personality" does it take to deny millions of folk's desperate health troubles?

How agreeable are they?
How open are they?
How consientious are they?
 
Messages
13,774
Research like this could be helpful for challenging some of the rather thoughtless assumptions that underpin a lot of personality research.

'Personality' is a term that can be used in different ways though, and I don't think people realising how external changes impact upon our personality is likely to lead to it's abandonment.
 
Messages
13,774
I've just had a look at this paper too:

They noted not much research into impact of health conditions on personality... they must have not searched for CFS stuff! We're so lucky.

Dolphin already highlighted some of this quote, but I'm including the bit on the expected decrease in emotional stability (increase in neuroticism):

Based on previous studies of chronic diseases and
quality of life (Stanton et al. 2007; de Ridder et al.
2008) we hypothesized that the onset of a disease
would be associated with a decrease in emotional stability
due to psychological distress, disability, and limitations
to daily activities caused by the disease. We
also hypothesized a decrease in extraversion, because
several chronic diseases cause fatigue and loss of energy
(de Ridder et al. 2008) that potentially decrease
features of extraversion, such as positive mood, activity,
and approach-motivated behaviour.

Dolphin already highlighted this, but I'll do so again, as it seems really relevant to what had always seemed to be poor arguments supporting the primarily psychosocial nature of MUS, with the claim that the association between lots of symptoms and emotional distress indicated that psychological factors play a causative (or 'perpetuating') role in symptoms:

The associations followed a dose– response pattern, with each chronic condition strengthening the association in a linear fashion.

Seems pretty unsurprising to me that lots of symptoms takes more of an emotional toll than just one.

Also - the effect size didn't need to be large for them to be able to report significant results.

It might have been interesting to see if they'd found the certain personality traits at the first time point were associated with an increased risk of going on to develop particular health problems.

One might then expect that ME/CFS, which often is like having several impairments in terms of the number of symptoms and in the impairment, would have big effect on personality scores.

Also - ME/CFS is unusual because of the prejudices/lack of support/quackery that often comes with it. It's really difficult to control for that, yet these seem to be exactly the sort of things likely to effect 'personality'.